This application is a continuation application of application Ser. No. 11/560,743, filed on Nov. 16, 2006, entitled “Systems and Methods for Managing a Persistent Virtual Avatar with Migrational Ability” which is hereby fully incorporated by reference.
The present invention relates to a system and method for managing a persistent virtual avatar, and more particularly a persistent virtual avatar that has the ability to migrate between virtual environments, and have cross-membrane capacity. Such an avatar is useful in conjunction with Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs), virtual worlds, online social networks, virtual classrooms, virtual healthcare advice, and virtual personal assistants. Currently most virtual environments are compiled in a unique and specific language. The fact that the virtual worlds are disparate, with dissimilar native languages makes the movement of data from one virtual environment to another technically difficult.
As known to those skilled in the art, an avatar is a virtual representation of an individual within a virtual environment. Avatars often include physical characteristics, statistical attributes, inventories, social relations, emotional representations, and weblogs (blogs) or other recorded historical data. Avatars may be human in appearance, but are not limited to any appearance constraints. Avatars may be personifications of a real world individual, such as a Player Character (PC) within a MMOG, or may be an artificial personality, such as a Non-Player Character (NPC). Additional artificial personality type avatars include personal assistants, guides, educators, answering servers and information providers. Additionally, some avatars may have the ability to be automated some of the time, and controlled by a human at other times. Such Quasi-Player Characters (QPCs) may perform mundane tasks automatically, but more expensive human agents take over in cases of complex problems.
Avatars often are the products of much labor and effort by their authors, since they often provide a unique creative outlet for the author and self-expression. The avatar is a representation of the author, not simply a tool, and as such the author's desires and essence is often reflected in the avatar. As a result, the author is often emotionally attached with her avatar, and great effort may be spent perfecting the Avatar's appearance, equipment, attributes and statistics.
Currently, in most situations, an individual owns a personal avatar that is capable of existing in one virtual environment. These virtual environments are typically hosted and maintained by companies. Additionally, these companies maintain an interface that allows the individual to control her avatar within the virtual environment. This interface utilizes the native language of the virtual environment.
Currently, the online realm is divided into three major categories: Massively Multiplayer Online Games, virtual social worlds, and web communities. In some instances the distinction between these virtual categories may become blurred as certain virtual environments have characteristics of a combination of categories. Additionally, Real World (RW) data is increasingly being digitized and may bleed into the traditional three categories as RW representations. Moreover, telecommunication devices may also be considered a medium for virtual text-based environments. However, with the advances in cellular phone, Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) and BlackBerry devices these virtual environments may evolve significantly in the future.
The number of active subscribers to MMOGs is at least 10 million people. Each person pays $15 and up a month to play these games, and maybe and additional 20 million people login occasionally. Estimates are that players spent about $1 billion in real money in 2005 on virtual goods and services for MMOGs combined. Moreover, at least 1.5 million people subscribe to virtual worlds. In January, 2006, inside one such virtual social world, people spent nearly $5 million in some 4.2 million transactions buying or selling clothes, buildings, and the like. Moreover, participants in web communities number in the multiple tens of millions.
Often participants have accounts in multiple different virtual environments. And whereas the subscription to these various virtual environments may be enormous, there is little to no connectivity between different virtual environments; largely due in part to disparate native languages and jealous territoriality by the virtual environments themselves. A character in a MMOG is unable to make an appearance within a second MMOG, much less in a virtual social world. There is strong user pressure, however, to allow assets and information from one virtual environment into another virtual environment. Examples of this include the emergence of weblogs, or blogs, discussing the exploits of a MMOG within a web community. Convergence describes this joining of virtual environments. Similarly, crossing the membrane, or cross-membrane, describes the movement of Real World data into a virtual environment, and vice versa.
The frontier of convergence and cross-membrane offers many possibilities for mapping, exploring, and populating what is unknown territory. Given the effort put into the creation of avatars, and the emotional attachments associated with them, it is logical that a paramount issue of convergence and cross-membrane will be the persistence of these avatars between virtual environments. Such movement by an avatar between multiple virtual environments is known as migration. Systems for managing persistent avatars across virtual environments as they migrate do not currently exist.
Additionally, with the migration of avatars across virtual environments it will become necessary that the users' information is available to the new environment. The avatar may be halted in her migration, and prompted for the necessary information as migration occurs. However such a system is not conducive to seamless migration between virtual environments. As such, a system of ranking the trust level of a specific virtual environment, and brokering user information dependent upon such a trust rank will be beneficial.
Lastly, a natural extension of migration will include the ability to monitor all virtual environments, as well as the real world, for events that the user would take interest in. The user may then be notified of the significant event regardless of the user's virtual or physical location.
It is therefore apparent that an urgent need exists for a system and method for managing virtual avatars that integrates the ability to migrate between worlds, broker user information and containing cross-membrane capabilities. This system would be able to provide highly persistent virtual personalities for personal and corporate use.